Blockchain is now a hot spot in the venture capital circle and the Internet industry. Various projects are emerging one after another, and traditional investors have transformed and joined it. When it comes to blockchain, decentralization is a word that cannot be avoided; decentralization is like democracy, which is a charming word. After all, most people are not the center of the world. I hope that the fairness brought by decentralization . In fact, since the development of the blockchain from Bitcoin to the present, its concept of decentralization is constantly weakening, and it can even be said that there will be no decentralization after Bitcoin.
The concept of blockchain is derived from Bitcoin, which refers to the database that packages transaction data into blocks and saves them through a chain structure. Bitcoin hopes to establish a peer-to-peer cash system, which realizes the carrying of value by building consensus-based scarcity, and uses the p2p network to achieve decentralized value transfer. Bitcoin has UTXO that is different from the traditional account model, POW consensus that generates a lot of energy consumption, and highly redundant ledger data storage. It is these seemingly redundant designs that make it trustless, immutable, transparent and fair. , but also makes it more complex, slow and expensive than traditional interconnects. In fact, this vaguely reflects a feature of the blockchain: unlike the Internet, "Internet +" is basically an addition, while "Blockchain +" may be a subtraction.
Blockchain projects such as Ethereum and NEO are called Blockchain 2.0 because they jumped out of Bitcoin's cash system and proposed the concept of smart contracts. Ethereum has Turing-complete computing power, similar to a virtual computer that can be used by people all over the world, and smart contracts are the programs it runs. In fact, Bitcoin also has smart contracts, but its contracts can only be related to transfers, which lacks freedom compared to Ethereum. Ethereum is like a smart machine, and Bitcoin is like a walkie-talkie. Even though Ethereum is powerful and imaginative, Bitcoin’s stability and degree of decentralization make it irreplaceable.
Computer programs can generate and edit files, and smart contracts also need objects to operate, which are smart assets, which generally exist in the form of coins. The trustlessness achieved by the blockchain is within the system. Once it involves outside the system, that is, off-chain, traditional trust is still required. For example: USDT anchored to the US dollar claims that 1USDT is exchanged for 1USD, but the payment in USD As off-chain behavior is not controllable by smart contracts. Connecting on-chain and off-chain is currently compromising trust, and its real realization may require open-source neutral artificial intelligence and 3D printing-based intelligent manufacturing. Even a smart contract that only operates smart assets on the chain is likely to cause loopholes in the contract itself due to the negligence of its programmers. This is generally seen in past DAO events and the recent frequent Token value overflows. Therefore, smart contracts are not omnipotent, and making them close to omnipotence requires designing extremely complex or compromising centralization.
The design concept of Bitcoin comes from distrust of others. It is because of distrust of intermediaries and banks that Satoshi Nakamoto wants to develop Bitcoin. I think part of the reason why Satoshi Nakamoto is still unknown is that he wants people to stop believing in themselves as human beings and focus only on the code and white paper of Bitcoin. Maybe Satoshi Nakamoto is one of craig wright, dave kleiman or hal finney, but one of them could not prove himself and was resisted by the industry, and the other two died young, who is Satoshi Nakamoto may become a mystery forever. The founder has a profound influence on the project. The departure of BM made bitshares and steem stagnant, and ethereum classic can also be regarded as the Ethereum after Vitalik left. Even with its decentralized design, most blockchain projects are still has a center. The Satoshi Nakamoto era of Bitcoin was very short. After he disappeared, the development team and the miners became a kind of mutual restraint. To break this balance, the only way is to fork. But the fork must be led by someone, that is, there is a founder. Under the same degree of decentralization, the performance and other aspects are inferior to the smart contract platform, and the fork currency has no future. Bitcoin does not need human beings as individuals, miners are just tools and developers are always under the shadow of Satoshi Nakamoto and cannot really have the right to speak. It is also very important that former Bitcoin supporters such as roger ver and gavin andresen will switch to the Bitcoin Cash camp. It's normal.
Bitcoin's POW (Proof of Work) consensus mechanism is often criticized, and the POW consensus mechanism is what we often hear about mining. Mining has gone through three stages: the CPU era, the GPU era, and the ASIC era. Currently, more than 90% of the computing power comes from ASIC mining machines produced by three Chinese companies. 90%>51%, some people think that this can prove the centralization of Bitcoin; in fact, the concentration of computing power is different from the centralization of the organization, no matter how much the cost of computing power is concentrated, even if the computing power is concentrated to 99%, it will still have the same goals and benefits as the remaining 1%, because if it breaks the system, the remaining nodes will immediately exclude it and make its previous cost in vain. The centralization of the organization will oppose the organization to the outside, and the rational center will maximize its own interests.
Decentralization is more like an idea and an ideal. Bitcoin not only has its function as a vehicle of value, but also has a totem effect that allows people to rethink the status quo and seek breakthroughs. But this does not mean that we should blindly pursue decentralization or even think that Bitcoin is superior to the new generation of public chain projects such as Ethereum and Nebula. On the contrary, the new generation of public chain projects have higher performance and more reasonable design, and only they can provide Services that meet the needs of the public, let the blockchain really land.